Ground Zero
Further Relativity
“Everybody wants something from the LORD,” says the author of Ground Zero: Further Relativity. Unfortunately, as David Eshemitan, who goes by the pen name Dotman, also believes, “the Supreme Being is an absentee landlord who left the house for the tenants to take care of.”
Ground Zero is Eshemitan’s blueprint, map, and “game” or “lab,” as he varyingly describes his process, for those who find themselves feeling abandoned in the house of the Lord. He offers this work as a guide for people to search for knowledge and to solve what he calls the “four fundamental questions” of existence and creation for themselves, rather than relying upon others to tell them the answers. Attempting to follow Eshemitan’s guidance, however, is likely to present knowledge seekers with an even greater mystery.
“If you want to be somebody else, change your mind,” is Eshemitan’s advice in this self-help book for the spiritually confused. Life is more project than trial, he believes—a journey that can only begin once someone steps out from “under the umbrella of superstition.”
How to go about doing this, however, is not presented at all clearly. Eshemitan’s Nigerian-accented English is musical but also very hard on the Western ear and eye. He writes in a tangential and rambling form that those used to a more classical train of thought are sure to find very confusing. His writing is difficult at best and at points impossible to follow, with logic that does not travel in a straight line and arguments that are often indiscernible. Many may find that even after repeated re-readings of many paragraphs, they have no clear idea what Eshemitan wants them to do or even what he is talking about.
Most of the twenty-four chapters read like drafts of sermons or esoteric essays. Chapter 23 is entitled “Esoteric Vista (Supplementary),” which may have something to do with the soul in the afterlife, or just might be about asking his aunt to allow him to bed his cousin or his father’s “most junior widow.” Attempts to explain good and evil through a “Wanting Triangle” are similarly confusing, as are the mathematical graphs and equations Eshemitan presents, none of which are fully explained.
Eshemitan may be brilliant, yet he is not able to convey that through his writing. Ground Zero is an incredibly difficult work to read, let alone comprehend.
Reviewed by
Mark McLaughlin
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
